As regular readers know, I have written a couple of posts in the past about the ability of social media platforms (TikTok, Instagram etc) to attract people who have mental pathologies such as excessive attention seeking, worldviews with no connection to physical reality and other people who are generally not in their right mind. So my question is as follows: do you think that social media create conditions which drive susceptible people crazy or does it preferentially attract and amplify the mentally unwell? Or is it some combination of both?
It is no secret that the number of mentally unwell people in developed countries has been going up over the past few decades. For example, many of you might have heard about a vey large increase in prescriptions for anti-depressants for white women over 45 over past two decades. There is also an unusually large increase for prescriptions for anti-psychotics over past decade even when population rates for major psychotic illnesses have not increased for decades. Even the massive increase in habitual opioid usage is about an increase in mental unwellness.
So what is going on? Is Social Media putting gasoline on a large fire which was already burning? Or is it creating new fires in addition to stoking the previous ones?
What do you think? Comments?
The solution to all of our problems for the past 10 years or more demonstrates a one in three chance you're not part of it right now even if you are aware or not social media could well be putting gasoline on a large fire which was already burning.
The gig economy is 34% involved in the US ! The gig economy is 34% involved in the US. A third of all workers earn some or all their living as a gig worker. The corporate communication system will tell you the gig economy is wonderful. 59 million people work in the industry and 29% of those have it as their primary job.
A convenient app on your phone delivers the goods gets you a cab
Corporate America especially loves it
There are no unions! Unions are the only reason workers achieve any kind of rights or any type of regulations. If it was not for unions you would be losing your job to a six year old because his little hands fit inside the cutting machine better! No weekends, holidays etc.
No health care (US) because technically they do not have employees.
No hurdles to firing someone that even remotely annoy them in the gig economy the apps can just stop talking to you.
You are also easy to replace because they do not have to get to know you, talk to you, work with you, learn anything about you and they hardly have to train you!
You are a nameless thing that delivers drives etc. and if that food arrives 5 minutes slower than the other thing that delivers, they get rid of you. Who cares he wasn’t even a human to begin with. He is a cog in an inhuman app-based world and cogs do not have rights or emotions, dreams or wishes.
Cogs just love being fired!
Gig workers do not work together, they are not talking to each other, they cannot plan or educate each other. There is no community. They cannot organize or unify!
You are separated and atomized!
This economy kills the balance of power even more to the corporate sector! Every gain made by workers was done through collective action. The gig economy destroys that collective nature of labor.
This extends to varying degrees into other industries!! American society is morally bankrupt and politically broken, and its vision of the future appears utterly dystopian.
Neoliberal capitalism is a particularly savage, cruel, and exploitative regime of oppression. It has made a virtue out of self-interest and the pursuit of material wealth and in doing so has created a culture of shattered dreams and a landscape filled with “Broken highways, bankrupt cities, collapsing bridges, failed schools, the unemployed, the underpaid and the uninsured: all suggest a collective failure of will. These shortcomings are so endemic that we no longer know how to talk about what is wrong, much less set about repairing it.
Is it adding gasoline to the fire it could well be!!